Pic of the Week.

Last Thursday night, my friend Marcy and I tried a little something different for our usual girls’ night — a try at the popular “Poppin’ Cookin’.” In particular, I purchased the hamburger set (that looks eerily similar to that of McDonalds).

What is Poppin Cookin? It’s a Japanese phenomenon, in which people like myself get great pleasure out of not only making very tiny food, but cooking it from packets of powder. No, seriously.

My obsession with Poppin Cookin started months ago, when one a popular video blogger posted a series of videos of her and her friends making all of these tiny concoctions — there were mini donuts, little sushi (made of candy, mind you), a teeny layer-cake, baby gummies, and microscopic waffles.

I was mesmerized.

It’s supposed to look like this…

I immediately ordered the burger/fry kit, and it took nearly six weeks (!) for it to arrive. Once it arrived, I waited for Marcy to come over before really taking a look at the package… and once I did, we discovered that indeed ALL of the instructions were in Japanese. Stupid me, I thought there’d be a cheat guide on the inside, but nope.

So we had two options: wing it, or learn Japanese in an hour.

Okay, so there was a third option: watch a YouTube video. And that’s what we did. Meanwhile, we still got some of the powder packets mixed up, which left us with buns made of the potato and fries made of bun bread.

But hell, it all still tasted EXACTLY like McDonald’s, which was cool, until I started picturing the employees dumping giant bags of powder into a vat to make fries. Blech.

Anyway, even though it didn’t turn out exactly like the picture on the box, I give us props. It was our first time poppin cookin, and I think we did a pretty stellar job.

The Squeeze

The Bitter Lemon is home to lifestyle writer, editor, and author, Holly A. Phillips. She's an obsessive dreamer, TV-addict, and a relentless blogger, who's recently taken up casual calligraphy. She currently lives in Austin, Texas with her cat, Blanche Devereaux.